Trent Alexander-Arnold’s future has dominated the Liverpool news agenda this week — and not just in soccer. It has felt likely for months now that this season would be Alexander-Arnold‘s last as a Red, but Monday’s widespread reports about his agreement to join Real Madrid virtually confirmed it.
The 26-year-old is one of Liverpool’s all-time great Premier League players, someone who has won literally all there is to win as a player for an English top-flight club, but rightly or wrongly, his legacy will suffer as a result of his impending departure.
Liverpool fans generally understand when high-profile foreign exports want to move to Barcelona or Real Madrid, but they hold local players to far higher standards where loyalty is concerned: just ask Steve McManaman and Michael Owen.
Objectively, the chance to play for Real Madrid is one that few would turn down, but soccer is not objective, and Alexander-Arnold’s exit will hurt a lot of Reds fans, maybe for quite some time.
Liverpool is a soccer behemoth, though, and on the pitch, it will move on quickly. Talks have taken place about the possibility of Jeremie Frimpong moving to Merseyside, and he is undoubtedly a signing that would get fans’ juices flowing.
Frimpong has emerged as one of the best wing-backs in the world since moving to Bayer Leverkusen in January 2021, playing a key role in the club’s incredible 2023-24 season, when the team came within one game of going unbeaten in all competitions all season and winning a treble.
This season, he has often played in a more advanced position for his club, while his most common position when representing the Netherlands is as a right winger. So, while the expectation is that he would replace Alexander-Arnold in Liverpool’s team, there is also the possibility that he would provide Arne Slot with an extra option in attack as well.
He proved to be a threat for the Netherlands when deployed on the wing against Spain in the Nations League quarter-finals, grabbing an assist in the first leg and prompting his manager, the former Everton boss Ronald Koeman, to describe him as “lethal.”
The expectation is that Mohamed Salah will extend his Liverpool contract beyond the end of this season, but nothing can change the fact that he will be 33 years old when next season starts, and he is clearly closer to the end of his Liverpool career than he is to the beginning of it.
The maximum-length deal that Salah will sign is three years, at the end of which Frimpong will still only be 27. Over the following three years, could he start out operating as Alexander-Arnold’s replacement before growing into the right-wing role in Liverpool’s team? Salah is irreplaceable, but Frimpong has quality in abundance and could be a major asset for Liverpool both in defense and in attack.
